Coveted slots at Montgomery Kid Connection force some to camp out
By: Jake Uitti
MONTGOMERY Parents seeking a place for their children in the coveted Kid Connection Kindergarten Enrichment Program lined up in the parking lot overnight by the locked doors of the Otto Kaufman Community Center some as early as 13 hours before the first-come, first-serve registration even began.
"I was supposed to be in Quebec," said Dianna Li, one of the parents waiting in a foldout camping chair Tuesday evening to register her child for Kid Connection the following morning. "But because of this, I had to rearrange my schedule. We’re praying it doesn’t rain."
Ms. Li, along with many other parents, began planting themselves around 7 p.m. Tuesday, to wait for the doors of the Community Center to open at 8 a.m. Wednesday.
"My father drove by the place," said David Mason, another dedicated parent. "He said he saw people waiting out front. I thought I read the paper wrong, and registration was 8 at night. When I got here, I found out what was going on, and then I called my wife she was mad," he said with a laugh.
Mr. Mason’s wife showed up 30 minutes later with a flashlight, a lunch box and a warm smile. And then they sat together to wait with the other parents.
The Kid Connection Kindergarten Enrichment Program, which combines with the kindergarten classes of the district’s Orchard Hill Elementary School, is well known in the township for its high achievement and, parents said, if a child is lucky enough to make it into the program, his or her education opportunities for the future improve.
But isn’t there an easier way to register for the program? Perhaps online registration, or a lottery?
"All the parents we surveyed," said Laure Scasserra, the director of the enrichment program, "feel this is the only way they can control the outcome. They feel a lottery is too random. We looked into online registration, but parents felt this was the best way."
Ms. Scasserra said parents might not get their first choice of time slot for the enrichment program, which offers both morning and afternoon slots, but once it was all over, "We added a fifth class," she said. "In that way we were able to accommodate everybody except very few. A small number of people had to be put on a wait list."
In the end, sometime after 1 p.m. Wednesday, about 200 children were registered for the program, she said.
"The way we set it up in January," Ms. Scasserra noted, "we took a lot of time to explain what the availability would be, and how the registration process works so parents know going into it that they may be asking for something that’s very limited."
After Wednesday, she said, parents can call to get their child’s name on a wait list for the kindergarten program. Kid Connection also offers preschool programs, though the registration for those occurred in March.

